Globalisation and Legitimacy

So what sustains party legitimacy in a globalised China of Jiang and Hu that is no longer recognisably Communist to many? Who runs China therefore and under what ideology if any? I’ll consider those questions in this post and in the next I’ll consider the very important question of what the key problems are in the vital countryside and the action the CCP is taking in attempting to resolve them.

Many in the West predicted that the CCP would go the way of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe. Evidently they saw the breakdown of Communist ideology as necessitating an end to the rule of Communist parties. I may ask why the CCP alone has been able to maintain its legitimacy but I should also allow that it may not be for all time. Nevertheless it has remained in power and there must be a reason.

The CCP has given thought to this question and has come up with five basic reasons for its legitimacy:

1) It has fostered and maintained enormous levels of economic growth;

2) Consequently living standards have increased [although inequality has also increased markedly, of course];

3) Especially from the mid 1990s, it has tried to promote its aims as nationalist and in the national interest (they point to what they promote as a successful history);

4) They are able to maintain social stability in accordance with their ‘neo-authoritarian’ and ‘Asian Values’ philosophies; and

5) They are working on improving their ethical standards and stamping out corruption.

Perhaps the most promising of these bases of legitimacy in the medium term is the appeal to nationalism but it is a double edged sword.

The powerful ‘culture fever’ that erupted following the CR was partly about reasserting pride in China’s imperial past and national pride generally at China’s historical and ongoing global status and is a positive asset to China as well as CCP legitimacy. Yet pride in turn has depended upon the recent advance in living standards to a large extent and has been dampened by a sense of humiliation at the unfairness of US hegemony and the success of Japan. The expected return of Taiwan to the Chinese fold has become a symbol of the reversal of that humiliation and Taiwan is not necessarily expected to be the be all and end all of that process. Japan is still sometimes seen as an enemy and not sufficiently punished for various war crimes.

The CCP is ‘cashing in’ on these feelings of humiliation in order to promote the sense of unity that it feels is in its immediate interests. This can be seen as necessary to provide the ostensible raison d’être for a post-Marxist CCP government but here is where nationalism has become a two edged sword. The government can also be criticised for the pace at which it addresses the humiliation of a great nation or fails to sufficiently represent the national interest well enough generally. Examples of this problem of popular nationalism include the reaction to WTO negotiations in 2001 (where the CCP was accused of giving away too much) and accusations that China has been too soft on Japan over wartime atrocities.

The CCP’s reaction to the above potential threat to its legitimacy has been to learn the lesson of Tiananmen. Party thinkers in leadership tend to see the lesson as: cracking down hard and early on dissent promotes stability.

Their verdict on Tiananmen has remained unchanged in recent years (despite recent talk of a re-evaluation) as evidenced by the extended prison terms (11 years) meted out to various democracy activists more recently (such as those of the China Democracy Party) and not since commuted (the re-evaluation of the ‘incident’ is yet to materialise).

The approach to the Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) is another result of this reaction. Practitioners were declared an ‘evil cult’ in 1999 and suppressed following a sit-in protest of around 10,000 of them following a scathing editorial against the group. The protest saw them surrounding Zhongnanhai (the residential area in central Beijing near Tiananmen reserved for much of the CCP high leadership). The evil seems to be that it is a challenge to CCP ideology. The group is critical of much of what the current CCP government seems to stand for. Jiang was the main hardliner at the time when it came to cracking down on what is actually a fairly harmless breathing practice called qigong. For more on suppression of this group, go to the group’s own websites.

The other issues being cracked down on are ethnic in nature and concern the Tibetans mainly in Tibet and the Muslims (mainly Uighur and mainly in Xinjiang (called East Turkistan or Uighurstan especially by some separatists)). The “War of Terror” almost couldn’t have come at a better time from the point of view of the CCP. The Chinese government now feels it more or less has the cover it needs to crack down as necessary and it does crack down (whether real terrorism is involved or not) as necessary. Of course China hasn’t been alone in revelling in the cover provided. Russia and Israel are two other notable cases, not to mention the US itself.

Who is in power (if not Marxists) is another question. The year 2002 marked a changing of the guard when Hu came to power but also most of the Politburo was also replaced.

Jiang finished his term as Party Secretary in 2002 (relinquishing that role to Hu) but provided some of the answers to that question as he left this formal role with his Three Represents.

The CCP constitution was amended in 2002 so that the ideology of the party was now formally: Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important Ideology of “the Three Represents (三个代表)”. This last was what the party now stood for (represented). It stood for the most advanced forces of production, the most advanced culture and the fundamental interests of the broadest mass of the people. The shift here was that this suggested it was no longer a party explicitly of workers; it could also be the party of their bosses, and of intellectuals and artists. It now represented ‘advanced elements’ (who by virtue of being that were now also the only people eligible to be members of the party – so you could also be a worker and not eligible) rather than revolutionaries – the revolution was now over. This really just formalised what had already become the practice.

The leadership as I’ve mentioned was also shaken up. Hu assumed the leadership although he was the second youngest of the nine Politburo Standing Committee members.

All but one of the group were also qualified engineers (predominantly from the one technology university that Hu trained in engineering at, Qinghua) – the outlier, Wen Jiabao, was a geologist (trained at the Beijing Institute of Geology). Wen’s case shows that it was possible to be mentored in the party by a discredited leader (Zhao Ziyang in Wen’s case) and still reach the second or third highest rank in the PRC. Only Hu was kept on from the previous group and he was also the only member remaining who had been mentored by Deng. Most had been mentored by Jiang. There’s a joke in China that Qinghua produces China’s leaders and Beida (Beijing University) produces its prisoners. Here’s the group:

Name	Age	Profession	University	Mentor
Hu Jintao	59	Engineer	Qinghua	Deng Xiaoping
Wu Bangguo	61	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wen Jiabao	60	Geologist	Beijing Institute of Geology	Zhao Ziyang
Jia Qinglin	62	Engineer	Hebei Engineering College	Jiang Zemin
Zeng Qinghong	63	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Huang Ju	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Wu Guanzheng	64	Engineer	Qinghua	Jiang Zemin
Li Changchun	58	Engineer	Harbin Institute of Technology	Jiang Zemin
Luo Gan	67	Engineer	Beijing Institute of Iron & Steel	Li Peng

So it’s a technocratic group that have been well mentored in the business of government in the new China and that embraces the new business elites (who might otherwise become an opposition). The training of the group is not in political change, it’s in technocratic problem-solving and that is their focus.

This currently suits the business elites with whom they are intimately linked so it’s not yet in the interests of the business middle class to challenge the political position of this type of problem-solving state. From the orthodox Marxist point of view it is also still possible to view the business class as powerful and imaginative allies provided they remain securely yoked to the benefit of the CPP dictatorship. The times in China are indeed still interesting for Marxists today. To paraphrase Sun Zi, the CCP is keeping its friends close and its (at least potential) enemies closer. And the policy is currently working as the potential enemies are currently being kept happy with the amount of (close) influence they are able to have upon reforms as they occur.

In 2006, the CCP launched the “eight glories and eight disgraces (八榮八耻)” campaign. This is aimed at promoting compliance among the population and it was at least partly designed to be learnt about by rote by schoolchildren. This is how to be a good Communist today. Here are the eight of both:

1. It is glorious to adore the fatherland; it is a disgrace to harm the fatherland;

2. It is glorious to serve the people; it is a disgrace to disserve the people;

3. It is glorious to respect science; it is a disgrace to be ignorant and unenlightened;

4. It is glorious to work hard; it is a disgrace to be indolent;

5. It is glorious to promote unity and mutual help; it is a disgrace to be self-seeking;

6. It is glorious to be honest and trustworthy; it is a disgrace to be mercenary and profit-grabbing;

7. It is glorious to be disciplined and law abiding; it is a disgrace to violate laws and disciplines;

8. It is glorious to be willing to struggle; it is a disgrace to be sybaritic.

The next post will be on the rural issues that continue to plague China (and CCP responses).